Welcome to the webbed and wired edition of R&R, aristotle. We’ll be doing the same sort of song and dance here as we do in print: reviewing the latest comics and cartoon-related books and ranting about trends and abuses and unfathomable foolishnesses. Each installment will stay here for about four weeks, with a new one coming in just about every other week or so. If you don’t have the time to ponder every punctuation mark in this deathless prose and merely want to see what might be there that would interest you, we suggest you scroll down the page looking for the bold-face type that heralds the notables who reside herein this week. So here we go with Opus 266 (and a reprise of Opus 265):

Opus 266: Beetle’s 60, Cathy Quits & Newsboy Legion Reprint Reviewed (August 30, 2010).

Opus 265: The 41^st San Diego Comic-Con & Farewell to John Callahan (August 10, 2010).

Opus 266 (August 30, 2010). Featured this time, the ways Beetle Bailey is celebrating its 60^th anniversary, after which, we ponder the end of Cathy and feminism in comics from this watershed strip to kick-butt cuties in superheroine comic books and on the Big Screen, plus Wonder Woman’s new duds, a review of DC’s The Newsboy Legion reprint tome, and Jim Ivey, beach comber and editooner. Here’s what’s here, in order by department:

NOUS R US

Candidates for Female Lead in Spidey Movie

Popeye in Chester

Sparky at Smithsonian’s Portrait Gallery

Luann Sings

Calvin and Hobbes Homage in Lio Reprint

Comic Strips Aren’t Dead Yet

Blagojevich at the Chicago Comic-Con

BEETLE KEEPS MARCHIN’ ON

60^th Year for Mort Walker’s Strip

CATHY ENDS

Feminism in Comics from Cathy to Kick-Butt Super Cuties

Wonder Woman’s New Duds

EDITOONERY

Last Month’s Crop

David Fitzsimmons

THE FROTH ESTATE

The Continuing Abdication of Journalistic Responsibility

The Mosque in NY that Isn’t a Mosque

JIM IVEY

Biography and His Commentaries

BOOK REVIEW

The Newsboy Legion

Who Inked Kirby?

RANCID RAVES GALLERY

Hands Across America

And our customary reminder: when you get to the $ubscriber/Associate Section (perusal of which is restricted to paid subscribers), don’t forget to activate the “Bathroom Button” by clicking on the “print friendly version” so you can print off a copy of just this installment for reading later, at your leisure while enthroned. Without further adieu, then, here we go—

NOUS R US

Some of All the News That Gives Us Fits

The casting of the female lead in Marc Webb’s once-and-future Spider-Man movie is generating almost as much heat as the laborious process that ended when Andrew Garfield was chosen to play the young Peter Parker, reports ICv2. Webb is reportedly considering at least five actresses, but regardless of who is selected, she won’t be playing Mary Jane Watson. Spidey’s love interest in the Webb romp won’t be Gwen Stacy either, say insiders: the script pages given to the actresses have no name listed for the character. The five: Emma Roberts, Imogen Poots (“Fright Night”), Teresa Palmer (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”), Lily Collins (“Priest”), and Ophelia Lovibond (“Nowhere Boy”).

            In Denmark, a museum exhibit of Japanese manga animation (anime, I think is the usual term) has been branded child porn. Protestors, who claim children are depicted in an overtly sexual manner, want the show banned. But museum curator Christian Hviid Mortensen says the point of the exhibition is to raise the question: “I have to admit that I myself was shocked at how extreme this genre is, and how deranged the imaginations are in this universe,” said Mortensen.

“But we're not showing the works for the sake of displaying child pornography. We're looking for a debate on the issue. So if people are offended by it then they should by all means speak out and say so,” adding that the animated pictures do not depict any explicit sexual acts. According to cphpost.dk, “Sweden already has a ban on children being depicted in any sexual manner, and a proposal for a ban that was put forward by the Social Democrats is currently being discussed in the Danish parliament.” The museum show will doubtless contribute to the dialogue.

            The current issue of Comics Buyers Guide (No. 1670, October) is a lot about Batman in his various manifestations over the years. The cover carries a big drawing of Batman Rampant, his current psychotic rage guise, with tiny insets for the Batman of the 1940s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Nothing, strangely, evoking the 1950s, when the classic square-jawed Batman prevailed. … Despite having won 6 of the last 10 top Annie Awards, Disney has withdrawn from the International Animated Film Society because of the way the group determines Annie winners—by vote of the members, I assume, but membership can be purchased by anyone, Disney contends. According to Brooks Barnes at the New York Times, Disney has been miffed by this arrangement for years but when DreamWorks won several Annies last year and Disney’s “Wall-E” won nothing (except, in another competition, an Oscar), the Mouse House began active agitation for change, and change, alas, has not been forthcoming. ... Asterix and his merry band of woodland warriors have been recruited to tout Golden Arches’ burgers in MacDonald’s latest ad campaign, a development that has enraged French bloggers, who protest the desecration of a French icon. ... In a press release, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund announced the engagement of Robert Corn-Revere as the organization's new legal counsel. “Bob will lead the CBLDF's legal program, serving as the first responder to First Amendment emergencies that come to the organization's attention, as well as providing guidance and assistance to the comics community on legal issues that impact their First Amendment rights. He succeeds legendary First Amendment advocate Burton Joseph, who passed away earlier this year. Corn-Revere is one of the country's most prominent First Amendment experts, with extensive publications and litigation experience.” ... Cartoonist Stan Lynde (Rick O’Shay and Latigo, plus at least four novels about the Old West, beginning with The Bodacious Kid) was the emcee for the August 19-22 Western Rendevous of Art at Helena, Montana, a showcase of Western-themed painting and sculpture.

            Chester, Illinois sprouts murals and statues of Popeye like crabgrass. That’s because Popeye’s creator, Elzie Crisler Segar, was born in Chester in 1894 and did some of his first cartooning at the age of 12 while working as a projectionist at the local movie house—the 1875 Chester Opera House, still standing and now serving as a Popeye museum and gift shop. The town legend is that while re-winding films, Segar drew pictures of local personalities and projected them onto glass slides and the screen. Sounds pretty elaborate to me, but you can’t question local legend. At least one of those Chester personages looked, they say, like Popeye. Marti Attoun at americanprofile.com avers that “Segar's boss, Bill Schuchert, recognized the young artist's talent and paid for his mail-order cartooning lessons. Segar eventually landed a job with King Features in New York, where he created the Thimble Theatre comic strip starring the Oyl family in 1919.” Popeye came along in 1929 when Castor Oyl, looking for a way to get to Dice Island where he hoped to make his fortune by deploying the powers of a magical hen, hired the one-eyed sailor to take him by boat to his destination. The latest granite Popeye was unveiled in Chester last year.

            Incidentally (in a fit of total irrelevance), for the 10^th consecutive quarter, earnings are up, beyond analysts’ predictions, at Popeye restaurants, whose patrons (about 40 percent white, 40 percent black and 20 percent other minorities) may be presumed to be especially hard hit with unemployment, saith Al Lewis on the Dow Jones newswire. “The chain hopes to add as many as 130 restaurants this year.”

            From Alan Gardner at DailyCartoonist.com: A photograph of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) will be presented to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in a ceremony for invited guests October 1. The event recognizes the cartoonist’s impact on millions of people worldwide and coincides with commemorations surrounding the 60th anniversary of Peanuts. The 1986 photograph, created by portraitist Yousuf Karsh, is the Portrait Gallery’s first image of the famed cartoonist. In the picture, Schulz is at his drawing board with pen in hand. Before him is a partially completed Sunday Peanuts, the perennial favorite wherein Lucy snatches the football away just before Charlie Brown can kick it, sending him spinning through the air and flopping onto his back. And on August 9, Gardner reports: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid created confusion among the Grouchy Old Pachyderms when he accused Senate Republicans of practicing “the Charlie Brown theory of government” by delaying many of the Democratic legislative priorities. Quoting from The Hill, Gardner said a GOP aide joked: “I don’t get it—is Reid comparing himself to Charlie Brown, Lucy or the football?”

            Last June, Alan Gardner at DailyCartoonist.com directed our attention to a newly launched site by eight cartoonists (Tom Batiuk, Dave Coverly, Greg Evans, Peter Guren, Jeff Keane, Rick Kirkman, Mike Luckovich and Jerry Scott) to showcase their studios and their work. The site, thecartooniststudio.com, has added six more cartoonists: Chuck Ayers (Crankshaft), Jenny Campbell (Flo and Friends), Brian Crane (Pickles), Jan Eliot (Stone Soup), John Hambrock (Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee) and Tom Richmond (MAD Magazine cartoonist). Another recent addition to the site: the eponymous Luann in Evans’ strip is making a recording with her would-be beau, the Australian Quill, and if you want to hear her sing it, you can do so at thecartooniststudio.com. You’ll be hearing the pleasing voice of Corina Rose, daughter of friends of Evans, who dreams of being a recording artist and plays gigs around San Diego when not teaching music in elementary school.

THE COVER OF THE LATEST compilation of Mark Tatulli’s Lio comic strip was inspired, says Tatulli, by Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, specifically the reprint collection entitled There’s Treasure Everywhere for which cover Watterson drew Calvin and his toy tiger Hobbes digging for buried treasure in a forest. The Lio reprint is entitled, in a blatant allusion to the morbid interests of the strip’s pantomimic protagonist, There’s Corpses Everywhere, and its cover shows Lio in that same area of the forest, digging up a skull with a distinctly Calvin-like hairdo while his pet squid examines a discarded toy Hobbes.

            Tatulli explained to Tim Clodfelter at the Winston-Salem Journal: “Truth be told, I had done a Lio Sunday strip a few years back showing Lio discovering Calvin's skeleton in the snow (a reference to the very last "Let's go exploring" Calvin and Hobbes strip) and it caused such an uproar of outrage among Calvin fans that I just knew I had to do something bigger and more outrageous at some point. ... I was just laughing so hard to myself while putting the whole thing together. That's when the work is no longer work … the essence of what makes cartooning such a great occupation: making yourself laugh.”

            Tatulli continued: “I think Calvin and Hobbes had a huge influence on just about every cartoonist of my generation. How Watterson wrote, how he drew, how he structured his Sundays, how he colored his Sundays—it was all so fresh and new and exciting. Every strip was a surprise and it never got old. It still never gets old. I still look at his old strips and marvel, ‘How did he do that?’"

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF STRIPS

At her website, Rina Piccolo, of Tina’s Groove fame, ponders the future of the newspaper comic strip, listing seven reasons she believes comics aren’t dead (or, at least, seven signs of some sort of life). Here’s her blog:

            Last week at MoCCA a group of cartoonists and I got together to do a panel titled, “The Future Of The Traditional Comic Strip In An Era Of Dying Newspapers.” Many of us on the panel, and many in the audience, I’m sure, felt that the hour allotted went by too quickly, and it just wasn’t enough time to really hash it out. I myself wanted to say so much more than I did, and so today’s post is all about that.

            Please remember that I am a cartoonist, and not an expert on the newspaper marketplace. You may not agree with what I think about the whole matter, or you may know something that I don’t. Drop me a comment and let me know.

            1. Print syndication of comic strips to newspapers is still a business. For some cartoonists it’s a very big business. For a few others, like myself, it’s a living.

            2. Although print syndication is still a business, it’s important to note that it isn’t a growing business.

            3. Although it has always been hard to sell new strips to newspapers, in recent years it has become increasingly difficult. Even when a new strip breaks in, it’s difficult for it to maintain a big list of newspaper clients. One of the reasons for this is that when newspapers have to cut costs, the comics are one of the first places they look to. And which comics do they cut? It’s unfortunate that for many newspapers the policy is often, “Last in, first out.”

            4. The syndicates are aware of this (no. 3), and I believe the newer generation of cartoonists are beginning to realize it as well. The syndicates feel, I think, that while it’s important to embrace new methods of selling, marketing, and distribution, it’s also wise to continue to plug new strips into the traditional model as well.

            5. I strongly believe that the syndicates will use every possible resource to invest in business models that work.

            6. A career in cartooning is like a career in any field. To survive and ensure a healthy future, we cartoonists should diversify and embrace new technologies, and evolving ways of doing things. I don’t mean in terms of craft here—I mean marketing, selling, and promoting. To survive, we should have our ink-stained fingers in every pot—i.e., the internet and all the tools it provides.

            7. With an eye towards opening new, emerging channels of opportunity, the syndicates are looking for new material, new strips, and new talent. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that it is extremely difficult to “make it” in the business of comic strips, in a newspaper or anywhere.

            If you’re like me and feel there’s nothing quite like reading comics in a newspaper, then you’ll agree that the traditional newspaper comic strip is something that should be supported, and not so easily dismissed.

RCH again: Rina says she’s just a cartooner and not an expert on marketing in the newspaper industry, but she’s married to Brendan Burford, comics editor at King Features, Rina’s syndicate. While I don’t suppose they spend all of their spare moments discussing the fate of comic strips and the newspaper industry, I suspect they occasionally exchange a word or two on these subjects. In other words, Rina is not just any old cartooner off the streets, kimo sabe.

POLITICS AND COMICS

Rod Blagojevich, Illinois’ ousted governor (the Illinois senate voted unanimously to boot him—not a single dissenting vote!— don’t let’s call this guy the “former” governor, giving him more dignity than he deserves), visited the Chicago Comic-Con in a new fund-raising effort.

... To Learn How Blago Comported Himself in the Four-color Festivities, to Help Celebrate Beetle’s 60^th and to Contemplate Feminism in Comics from Cathy to Kick-ass Super Cuties, to Meet David Fitzsimmons and Jim Ivey, to Review the Newsboy Legion Compilation and to Help Us Wring Our Hands in Exasperation over the News Media’s Failure to Perform—and More, Much More—  You Must Hie Thee Thither to the $ubscriber/Associate Section, Where You’ll Get More of Our News Reports and Penetrating Analysis. To Get There, Click Here.  And If You're Not a $ubscriber/Associate—

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